


not if i...

by Fluffifullness



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Dark, Durarara!! Kink Meme, Escape, Hospitals, M/M, Rape, Rape Recovery, Violence, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 19:55:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffifullness/pseuds/Fluffifullness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prodigy falls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not if i...

**Author's Note:**

> So, try and guess what's been keeping me from updating my ongoing stories lately...
> 
> Written in response to [this prompt on the kink meme](http://drrrkink.livejournal.com/6253.html?thread=24767853#t24767853) and cross-posted to the [part 11 overflow](http://drrrkink.livejournal.com/7382.html?thread=25321174#t25321174).

Izaya is well aware of the dangers inherent in the job he’s chosen for himself. He’s doing exceedingly well at it despite that – or _because_ of it, maybe, and that’s more often than not what he likes to believe – and his age has earned him the additional title of _prodigy_ in a good number of circles. It was a hindrance at first; as a fifteen-something kid claiming to deal in information known not even to some of the underground’s top brass, he was only rarely given the chance to prove his worth.

Naturally, though, he was quick to force the point. He’s ruined quite a few people in just under two years, so if he’s not fearsome he’s at least one to be approached delicately. Notoriety like that is one of his aims, and handling it with an appropriate degree of caution is an important point of pride.

And that caution doesn’t just mean keeping his drinks out of strangers’ hands, either. It probably _should_ mean avoiding Shizu-chan and his little outbursts, but that’s not _fun,_ and besides – he can handle Heiwajima Shizuo. The guy’s an idiot, but not _really_ out to kill him – regardless of what he himself may say – and that’s why he’s more entertaining than anything else.

Izaya relaxes when he’s out exploring the city, too, but that’s also where the constant need to be wary comes into play. He’s not just watching for Shizuo; the corners of his eyes are perpetually trained on dark patches, shadows. Sharp corners and alleyways. When he twirls on the point of his heel to scan the sweeping panorama of his city, he’s also checking to see that no one’s tailing him.

He’s never allowed anyone to find his house and family. He’d rather not lose either of them to third-rate gangsters or power-thirsty yakuza, after all, and then he needs all of that as a safe base of operations, anyway. Pride and practicality.

There’s this: the defense he’s built, the fact of practicing hard with knives – for throwing, for making delicate, accurate cuts and startling potential attackers into dropped guards – and he’s also fast-getting-faster thanks to his near-daily running away from Shizu-chan. He makes a point of concealing his emotions, even arbitrarily. He’s perfected his poker face, and to say that he ever lets even a hint of weakness show through would be almost laughably inaccurate. Not even Shinra knows exactly what goes on in his mind.

And, for all of that, he’s almost bored to the point of apathy when it all falls through.

He can’t be quite as hyperactive, bouncy, _alert_ when he’s with his more important clients. As a seventeen year old who probably looks more naïve than any of the hundreds of idiot adults out there, he has to be aloof and coolly polite to impress the people that surround him.

If the buttoned-up businessman – a new CEO, awfully young for his position, himself – seeing Izaya now wants to fall just a bit farther behind him than could be called purely conventional,  that’s fine. It has to be fine, because to indicate any sort of discomfort would be the same as showing fear. And he’s not afraid, not even uncomfortable.

Annoyed – that’s all.

He’s leading the way to a meeting place of his own choosing, anyway, so he decides that the man’s simply testing his resolve. It’s dark – very dark, moonless night and few lights or people in this part of the city – so with most of the situation’s control well within his own hands, Izaya’s sure that’s all it is.

Despite the warning signs – despite the achingly uncertain, buried-deep voice of reason.

He’s rarely wrong. The only thing that manages to convince him of his mistake this time is the crack of something hard and sharp against the back of his head – and then, of course, he sees a rush of gray, blurred-out lights and nothing.

The prodigy falls.

 

**~~*~~**

 

The first irritation of waking up is the light that surrounds him. His head is ringing with it, his vision fading in and out as his thoughts struggle to catch up with the sudden juxtaposition of night and sun. His hand is lying limp in front of his face. Everything is skewed wrong, he thinks, and then he recognizes his position as horizontal, the surface upon which he’s lying as a broad swath of newspapers on carpet.

The indignity of that position is the second annoyance, and the predictably familiar voice of his client the third. What really bothers him isn’t even the sound itself, though, but the tone it carries.

“Having a hard time, Orihara-kun?”

Izaya grunts disgustedly in response and works to clear his dry throat for a retort. The most he manages is a short whine; the man laughs amiably at it, at Izaya.

“Seems the drug’s a bit much for a kid as small as you, after all. I’d heard you were a hardy guy, really, but I suppose it is what it is, huh?”

“Suppose… so…” Izaya croaks, finally managing to tie his ragged voice to words. “Too bad.”

“I wouldn’t say that, kid,” the guy laughs. He crosses into Izaya’s field of vision, then, kneels in front of him and sinks his fingers into Izaya’s hair. He uses it to pull him upright; Izaya bites back a pained noise, his teeth tight together and he hopes to hell that nothing winds up getting yanked entirely loose. “This is exactly what I wanted, after all. Didn’t your parents ever warn you to keep your guard up around strangers?”

Izaya laughs in spite of himself. The sound is rough, but it restores a good deal of his courage. “Now, I can’t seem to remember. I’ve done a good job of it until now, haven’t I?”

“Until now,” the man agrees with a sudden smirk. He lets go of Izaya’s hair, at least, and the informant slumps back against the wall; his limbs are about as useful to him as noodles, it seems.

“And? I don’t have much in the way of money, you know. You’d have been better off getting that dirt on your competitors, I’m sure.”

“Oh, of course,” the guy laughs. “I’m not too worried about that, though. After all” – he all but purrs the word as his hands fall to the hem of Izaya’s T-shirt – “money’s not an issue at the moment. I’d much rather have a bit of fun, you know?”

“Fun,” Izaya repeats blandly. He continues to stare up at the man – reluctant to allow himself to be led to that conclusion, refusing to pick up the pieces that would necessarily build comprehension in the place of forced ignorance – and then he smiles. “What could you possibly have in mind?”

Everything is a warning sign. Be quiet, he reads, and fight. Don’t provoke anything worse than the inevitable. But he’s already done that, let himself be captured in the worst way, humiliated by the simple fact of having failed.

_Why stop there?_

That’s what skips through his fever-dark mind like so many neon-sign flickers, dying in and out.

He draws a sharp breath as the smooth pads of this stranger’s hands pick their way over the skin of his stomach and chest. They press close and hard and painful to the pink of his nipples, chilling the back of his neck – his hair standing stiffly on end.

“My, my,” he bites, “I never would’ve taken you for a pedophile.”

“So you consider yourself a child, then?” The man seems amused. “And does your body operate in accordance with that, Orihara-kun? Or are you more adult than you’ve yet learned to admit?”

Izaya swallows thickly and refuses to respond. Breathing is suddenly a maddeningly difficult task. His chest is rising and falling irregularly, dry air rasping in his throat as his heart flutters almost painfully under another person’s touch.

This is wrong; he feels it in every fiber of his being, from the flush in his cheeks to the chill of dread pooling in his stomach. He feels no loyalty toward most of the humans he knows, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a betrayal – if of nothing else, then of his love itself. And it’s also an unforgivable trespass. To think that he has the right to touch Izaya, to use his body to pleasure himself – to play with and laugh at him, cut at his heavy-duty pride – this man is funny and misguided and interesting, yes, but he’s also far below Izaya’s love.

“Don’t be getting cocky with me, now,” the man chuckles. His hand pressed to the back of Izaya’s head – fingers tangled up in black – he yanks him so far back that the informant’s neck feels like it’s going to break.

And then he kisses the skin there, first with tongue and then with teeth that scrape and bruise and drag hot blood out onto the smooth white of his throat.

Izaya groans, twitching desperately under his once-client’s ministrations. He can only watch as his shirt is pushed up, his pants down, as this man palms him deliberately through the gray of his boxers and foregoes laughter for satisfied grunts and heavy panting. He sounds like an animal, Izaya decides, and he detests him for it.

Because he’s not a human, or at least he’s not the kind of human that Izaya loves. He’s not a thing to be observed safely from a distance, no, he’s a crushing weight. He’s blinding pain. He’s choking and drowning, muffled cries and bitten-back pleas.

 

**~~*~~**

 

He thinks about Shizu-chan.

He thinks _hard_ about him and his immaturity and how mad it always makes Izaya. He thinks about running fast and leaping and laughing and how he hates the old bruises healing all over his legs. He wonders if he’ll be able to tell, later – which ones are new and which ones are from the fights he starts himself. He wonders if the new ones will somehow manage to overwrite the parts of him that shouldn’t be covered up.

He thinks that maybe, hopefully, he’ll be able to work himself up enough to feel normal. He’ll wash away the mortification with a healthy dose of rage; he’d give almost anything to fly off the handle just like Shizu-chan, just once.

He can’t, though, and – “How’s he do it,” he wonders aloud. His voice sounds tinny to his ears, so he saves himself the trouble and draws his lips into a tight line. His breath wheezes in and out of his nose, oxygen insufficient to keep him from slowly getting lightheaded. He doesn’t care; it’s funny, the apathy. He _should_ care, but he’s too tired to feel it strongly. He hasn’t felt the weight of real depression in a long time.

Being treated and seen as trash – put in that place, himself, he wonders how Shizu-chan can even manage anger most of the time.

His captor will be back soon enough. Izaya should try to escape – should at least be _thinking_ about it more than he is – but there’s too much pain there for him to deal with. He should stand, but his legs feel too heavy. His arms are too weak to accomplish much of anything; it’s all he can do to drag himself over to the little dish of water that’s been left out for him. It’s intended for dogs, clearly, but his lips and throat hurt so much that he’s willing to make an allowance just this once.

He only gets to wet his tongue, though, before he collapses back, too exhausted to so much as hold himself upright.

 

**~~*~~**

 

“He must be sick,” Shinra comments before the end of their first class. The teacher’d sailed right through the class roster after the bell, barely reacting to Izaya’s failure to respond; he misses even more school than Shizuo does, after all, so it really doesn’t make any damn sense to assume that he’s got something genuinely wrong with him today. “I wonder if it’s because you chased him through the rain before.”

“Tch. Hope it is,” Shizuo mutters into his bare knuckles. He’s sagging lazily onto his arm and desk, tired; he didn’t manage to get much sleep last night, mostly ‘cause of the damn flea and the afterburn of rage without an outlet – Izaya’s fault, of course. It’s his fault most of the time.

“That’s not very nice,” Shinra criticizes with an unconcerned frown. Shizuo just rolls his eyes.

“Izaya’s not around?”

“Ah – Dotachin.”

Kadota sighs and fixes a pointedly deadpan stare on Shinra. “Quit it,” he mutters before turning to Shizuo. “You guys get into another fight or something?”

Shizuo comes close to falling face-first onto his desk. “Why’s everyone think _I_ did something?!”

Kadota chuckles. “Sorry. It was just a guess. Don’t try to tell me it’s not a good one.”

“It’s not,” Shizuo hisses defensively. “He just – ran off, same as always.”

Shinra’s turn to laugh. “The comfortable routine, right?”

“Like hell!”

“I’d hate to have to call that comfortable,” Kadota agrees with a smile that is three-fourths of the way to becoming a smirk. “Unless Shizuo _lets_ him get away, I guess.”

“I don’t,” Shizuo mutters, settling back to cross his arms on his chest and glare at the desk in front of him. “I could care less if he doesn’t show up around here, though.”

 

**~~*~~**

 

Izaya expects the second time to be the same as the first; it’s worse.

His voice cracks after half a sentence, and from there it becomes nearly impossible to stitch it back together again, to stitch it into words and sentences. What he does manage are lung-shattering gasps and broken squeaks, many of them screams caught by the mile-wide lump in his throat.

The thing hanging over him, on the other hand – that half-recognized human form, all charming grins and hot breath – _it_ talks plenty, puts him in his new place with words as much as with actions. He’s to call him his master, _think about the position you’re in now and consider not fighting too much –_ which is ridiculous, anyway, because he’s done a great job of _that_ already.

This time, the man’s hands are cold when he touches Izaya. It’s not that he means to make the informant feel good – that’s just a side effect of the contact he initiates for his own pleasure – but the shock is a rush of blood and the panic a kind of arousal.

“Not so fast, now,” the man coos. “You haven’t got my permission.”

Izaya rocks back when he catches sight of the thing in his _master’s_ hand – and suddenly he’s really just a kid, terrified of the pleasure, more so of the pain, the snap of thin leather closing at the base of his leaking cock.

“Relax,” the man laughs. “It won’t kill you. Wouldn’t want you making a mess of the floor, though, would we?”

 _He’ll_ make a mess of the floor, though. He’ll make a mess of Izaya. And Izaya will lay back with his limbs splayed, limp save for the occasional twisting of his muscles, tensing, shuddering upon every bruising thrust. He’ll whine for release, and when he doesn’t get it he’ll hurt everywhere and bite his lip hard – until it bleeds, stinging, and then he’ll just keep biting.

 

**~~*~~**

 

He wakes up sopping wet in the middle of the third night. He thinks blood, first, and then he thinks cum. Water, maybe, a pointless cruelty exerted by his owner – a joke.

It’s not funny, though – not when he realizes what it really is. His eyes burn, his cheeks, the back of his neck and he can smell it wafting up from his lower body – naked, of course, because not once since the first time has the man holding him here bothered to clothe him in between fucks –

And he can’t move. He should be drugged out of his head, too, but instead it’s just his body that won’t do what he wants it to. His mind is all too clear, too breaking, too broken.

He swallows back bile and wonders how this happened. How he went from top-of-the-world devil-may-care to weak, vulnerable, flinching-at-the-drop-of-a-pin sad. How it wound up hurting this much despite all of his bravado. How he could have been so careful but not careful enough and he knows now that he should have done more thought more _cared_ more because –

– because, after all –

– it’s funny-not-funny, but he’s probably been really weak all along.

His view of his surroundings as he lies there waiting is the same as it’s been for the past seventy-two-and-counting hours: a bare room, three corners plus the one he’s lying in, and walls with nothing hanging on them. One window, big but very high up. A door, always closed. Izaya can never see any light shifting through the fronds of thick carpet at the bottom of it; at best, the room’s just secure. At worst, it’s entirely soundproof. And the latter’d make sense, anyway; this guy’s a CEO, wealthy enough to afford an apartment with expendable Western-style rooms far enough away from other people that he’s unlikely to be discovered.

Izaya figures that anyone half-capable of kidnapping and holding him like this should at least have the presence of mind to prepare for things like that.

He shivers. The place is also freezing, and the urine sticking to his legs and quickly cooling the floor beneath him isn’t helping. He won’t cry, but he wants to. He’s afraid of what’ll be done to him when his master drops by again in the morning.

If Shizu-chan could see, he wonders – would he be laughing now?

 

**~~*~~**

 

“Huh,” the man huffs. “So it _was_ too much for you, is that it?” He looks annoyed, but he’s not shouting yet – not that Izaya expects it, exactly; he has yet to see this man truly angry, and why should he be? He has all the power, all the control. If his game doesn’t go the way he wants it to, all he has to do is change the rules. It’s the way Izaya’s been learning to play for years, so he knows just how simple it actually is.

“Nothing to say for yourself? Were you trying to prove a point to me, kid?”

The way he stands, staring – and Izaya all curled in on himself, body stiff and cold despite his heart beating wildly in his chest. Izaya completely exposed, seemingly small and soaked in piss and probably looking ready to cry despite whatever faux rage he’s still capable of holding to in his facial expressions. And that man nothing if not impassive, mercilessly matter-of-fact. Commanding.

Izaya shudders heavily, his eyes forced close as a heavy lump of nausea works its way into his throat. He shakes his head silently and hates himself all over again for the irrational cowardice. Whatever happened to fighting? To laughing through the pain? He’s supposed to mock guys like this, pathetic losers with nothing but desperation and overblown egos.

“I wonder,” the man mutters. “Thinking of getting away like that? You thought you’d get a bath, didn’t you?”

 _As if I’d choose to wet myself for a slim chance like that,_ he wants to snap – but no, he can’t. He won’t even try, because in a small matter of days he’s started to hate the sound of his own voice. He hates what it gets him, and anyway staying silent requires less effort, makes him less noticeable – safe, in other words.

He’s sure his master understands that to some extent, but that hasn’t kept him from asking more and more questions. Probably because he knows that he won’t receive an answer, any retaliation. Izaya would like to call _that_ cowardly, but the constant stream of inquiry is really more unnerving than anything else.

The man leaves without another word, but the fact that he doesn’t so much as bother closing the door all the way behind him makes it clear that he plans to return right away – and when he does, it’s with a small bucket and fresh bundle of old newspapers.

“This was _your_ bad decision,” he prefaces, “so you’ll just have to hope that it doesn’t soak back up from the carpet underneath.”

Izaya draws a sharp breath when his master comes close enough to finally reveal the sloshing mass of soapy water, the sponge floating on it. When he kneels in front of Izaya with his hand searching his suit’s pocket – when he comes up with the now-familiar leather ring – Izaya’s chest starts to rise and fall fast – hyperventilating, almost, eyes darting all about the empty room the way they do when he gets especially desperate.

He’s shaking his head even before he knows that he is, but the man only laughs and forces his legs open to finger the thing onto his cock. He goes out of his way to touch Izaya all over as he does, and then he’s got the sponge out and it’s dripping hot, thick pools of water onto the informant’s shuddering stomach.

_No no no, no – no –_

The makeshift bath douses his skin in warmth, tear-tinted humiliation and

fear.

He’s afraid. That’s the conclusion. Panicking. That’s the result, the method. Crying, the delayed reaction, the swallowed-back realizations, shadowed epiphanies of reality, abuse barely endured.

He sinks his teeth into his already-swollen lips and thinks, _So this is rape._

 

**~~*~~**

 

That day ends and another one begins – and then _it_ ends and another replaces it and they all just keep creeping past like a wriggling ton of maggots.

His food – obvious leftovers, but he’d hardly touch them if they were dishfuls of ootoro, anyway – is brought to him normally. He’s held upright on a toilet once or twice a day and _watched_ until he finally gives in to the persistent growling in his stomach. He drinks just enough to leave his head light, lips cracked and bleeding – but heart-beating and breathing and therefore fuckable, which is all he really needs to be, after all.

He’s not exactly sure how many days have gone by, exactly, but he can tell by the light filtering in through his single window that it’s early morning when his owner comes back to see him – goes through the routine with which he’s starting to become so familiar, then sets him down newly-sedated on a fresh bed of newspapers, stiff-limbed and whimpering softly.

“Smile, Orihara-kun. I’m sure you’ll miss me today, too, but I can’t help working on a weekend, after all, there’s a _meeting_ ” – an important one, Izaya dully surmises, because his master’s almost manic under the strain of obvious nerves – “but tonight will make the wait well worth it, I promise.”

Izaya doesn’t _want_ it to be worth it, but he twists his lips into a broken smile, anyway, and that seems to placate the man into leaving with no more than a parting stroke.

The cold rush of self-disgust triggered by that alone sees him curling into a loose ball – his strength failing him when he tries to do more – mind fogging over, alone.

Abstractedly, he wonders – about Shinra, his sisters, what they’re doing now, what they’d think if they could only – if maybe – _and where,_ he thinks desperately, _where’s Shizu-chan, breaking things? Happy? Mad? I bet he misses me –_

But Izaya knows better, after all. He’s gone – so, happy. Shizu-chan _must_ be happy, maybe must be breaking things just a little less than usual. Maybe must be wandering around the city, looking for something else entirely on a peaceful day off.

 

**~~*~~**

He chews his lips whenever he thinks about anything that isn’t here. He can tell that it hasn’t been a lot of time, not really – or at least he hopes not, as alone as he feels, as sure as he is that no one’s out looking for him, anyway – but he’s almost accustomed to the routine of it. It’s funny, how he can get used even to this – to numbing fear and hopelessness. How despair can become its own form of contentment.

All it takes is embracing it.

So maybe that’s why burying himself in old memories now feels like the real betrayal; it’s no longer being touched and used and owned by a single man who so consistently behaves in exactly the same way, no, it’s not giving up humanity in exchange for boredom. It’s turning his back on that boredom, his new everyday.

If Shizuo were here and he could, he’d ask Izaya why he doesn’t ever think hard about escaping. Why he doesn’t ever try.

That time a few years ago, the knife entering Shinra’s body and the guilt of it. The one and only time Izaya’s ever taken responsibility for anything, his fault or not. It was sort of satisfying, really. A fun experiment, if nothing else.

He slipped, once. Shizu-chan almost caught him, his fingers brushed past his ankles and a shiver flew up his spine from that single point, but he got away. It was the biggest triumph of the day, but then – it was a boring day.

The texture of ootoro. He pretends that he can still feel it on his tongue, but the illusion doesn’t last long. His whole mouth hurts, stretched wide to accommodate an almost-stranger’s cock, and it’s dry. Bleeding, he bets. That’s nothing like ootoro, so he gives up quickly.

Returns to thinking about nothing, because, after all, that’s a lot simpler.

 

**~~*~~**

 

It rains for days.

It rains for days and days and then he hears a crash and it just keeps raining to drown it out – the sound and the memory, the fact that it should have been a noise like a car accident but wasn’t, no way, more like distant shouting and a limp body colliding heavily with blunt pain. More shouting. Then sirens.

But it’s raining and he’s tired, so he deludes himself into thinking that it’s someone like Shizu-chan coming to save him – just for a second, of course, and then he lets himself really forget all about it.

Because that’s ridiculous and this is reality and he’s alone, after all.

 

**~~*~~**

 

Really, it’s nothing if not rude.

Here he is waiting patiently, and the bastard doesn’t have the decency to come back with food. He probably expects Izaya to stick around, unfighting, even as his body gradually purges the drug – even as he regains the physical ability to fight his way out – and to be honest it’s probably the accuracy of the assumption that really gets to him.

He won’t fight. He can’t. He’s heavily exhausted and relatively malnourished and hardly as superhuman as the monstrous Shizu-chan. He can’t come back from stuff like this in the blink of an eye, but he _can_ lie still and hope and hate. He can imagine himself channeling his rival’s strength for long enough, _just long enough_ to get out and far away.

The first thing he’d do is pick a fight with that protozoan idiot. He deserves it for clinging so aggressively to every other thought of Izaya’s. For making him regret his generally lax attitude – the cowardice, the fear.

He deserves it even more when the man finally does come back, just under two days later with his left arm in a sling.

He explains that he was attacked by a “little friend” of Izaya’s – “said he didn’t like the way I smelled,” he laughs, “said it was like you” – and Izaya knows what that means but won’t go quite as far as acknowledging it.

Shizu-chan didn’t mean to help, anyway. And Izaya’s had to go without food or water for most of two days; he’s never wanted a drink more than he wants one now. Next to Shizuo himself, it’s almost all he can think about. His stomach is a knife in his gut. His body feels the same way it did with a strong sedative coursing its way through every dwindling ounce of blood. He’s exhausted but can’t relax enough to sleep; when the physical discomfort doesn’t keep him awake, the nightmares do.

“My, what a mess you are,” the man grunts. “Bit too far gone to be of much use tonight.”

“N-ne,” Izaya croaks, surprised at himself and his voice. He can’t remember the last time he spoke anything like real words. “A-at least – water – please.”

He expects it to be fine. If he’s such a mess, his owner should want to clean him up for later use. The tail end of that thought sets his stomach throbbing, cold dread and nausea, but at the very least it’s supposed to mean a moment or two of tiny relief.

What he gets is hardly that kind. The man’s face – the only face Izaya’s seen in at least a week and a half, maybe more if he’d only bothered to count – contorts, becomes outrage, fury, danger – booming and threatening and he flinches back, closes his eyes and pulls himself into a tight ball, face buried in his hands

and blow after blow

and that’s it, that’s all, he’s left alone and it doesn’t matter that he’s smart that he’s hurt that he’s powerful was powerful weak now and desperate clinging to his old ideal self the one that used to laugh the one that used to spin

because the outcome is always the same.

 

**~~*~~**

 

[You look upset.]

Shizuo reads that and then almost keeps walking without sparing Celty another glance. He’s on his way home, after all, and he’s gotta hurry – he’s supposed to help Kasuka with dinner tonight – but the observation gets to him enough that he finally does stop mid-stride to glance back at her and Shinra and that weird bike.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he grumbles. He hopes it’s not that either of them has heard about the trouble from a few days ago – that pompous dick who reeked of flea and the same-old, same-old trouble of getting hauled off to a holding cell to spend the night. That stuff’s not usually his fault, but even now he can’t argue that he wasn’t unprovoked this time.

He’d do it again, fucking expensive bail or not.

“Right,” Shinra agrees with a flippant grin. “He’s in a better mood than usual, isn’t he?”

Celty tilts her helmet curiously before somewhat closing the distance between herself and Shizuo.

[It’s that Orihara – right?]

Shizuo frowns. “No,” he denies. He hesitates for a moment, then decides to go with something a bit more honest than that. “But I guess – yeah, sort of.”

“Huh?”

“It’s fine as long as he doesn’t show his face at school, really,” Shizuo says, turning just briefly to face Shinra, “but I get the feeling he’s not gonna leave it like that, after all. Kinda just wish he’d get whatever it is over with so I could beat the living hell out of him and – um, just move on, I guess.”

Shinra chuckles. “That’s really harsh, isn’t it?” He glances at Celty, grins widely at her and then casually adds, “Though, on the other hand, I bet even Izaya-kun might be a bit disappointed by the lack of response around here. There were some girls talking about him earlier today, but aside from that we could easily be just a few of the only ones who’ve really noticed he’s not around.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Shizuo shrugs. “Who wants to remember a bastard like him, anyway?”

 

**~~*~~**

 

He could try a thousand times and never be able to put his finger on what, exactly, changes things.

Maybe it’s the thread of pain emanating from his split lip that draws him close to reality. Maybe it’s the boredom of lying around all day, half-starving and always too weak to drink enough of what’s left out for him. Maybe it’s the way his owner looks at him or the fact that he can’t even look at himself. Maybe it’s because he’s so vain that he can’t help but want to see his own face as it looks now – to reassure himself that he’s not really falling apart outwardly, not all the way.

Maybe it’s the staggering emotional breakdowns – one, two of them, and then they just keep coming. He can’t breathe; his chest hurts, he thinks he’s having a heart attack and his vision tunnels. He can’t see. He can’t think. He can only fear. And lurking behind every tremorous gasp and lurching shudder is another repetition of the premonition that this is how he’ll be stuck forever.

It’s a knowledge ingrained into the very marrow of his bones – as an information broker, as Orihara Izaya – that nothing happens in this world unless you can do whatever it takes to _make_ it happen, that if he lets himself be led through this he’ll die here, in this room with this man and his body as it gradually deteriorates.

He’d never get to lay eyes on the city again.

He flashes back to the door left ajar.

This was your bad decision, he remembers.

Your decision.

Your choice.

A _chance._

And, well, maybe it’s the fact that he can’t stop thinking about Shizu-chan – that too.

Whatever the reason, the cause is there and he continues to humiliate himself by cowering, eating little, crying and fisting his hands in crumpled newspaper every time his master bears down on him. He continues to entertain the man’s desires, and most of the time it’s not an act but forced habit.

When it _is_ an act, it’s also like a very small celebration of victory. Feels like the hope alone could break him if it all turned downhill – if the man realized, through the frustration of his own broken limb and the increasingly obvious stressors of his life beyond this room, that he hasn’t yet bothered to sedate Izaya – but with just a bit of pretending, Izaya’s surviving _his_ way. Building his strength while faking a total lack of it, of coordination, thought or consciousness – any combination of the above, really.

“Really getting to you, is it?” the man chuckles – several days in, Izaya’s stomach just emptied in the crazy-desperate throes of yet another attack – and he doesn’t even bother to clean his toy up, just makes half an attempt to get the mess away from his lower body – so that the play can continue, naturally.

“You’re certainly a lot worse for wear these days, Orihara-kun. I should be terribly insulted that you haven’t yet grown to like me.”

Izaya shudders, swallows back bile, and then tries hard to smile. He’s not sure it works, but the effort’s enough to save him a few bruises, at least.

“Changed a lot, haven’t you?” His master is outright laughing, now – thrusting into him at the same time, hot and wet and sloppily painful. “Used to talk back. Glad to see we’ve put a stop to that, anyhow. Though you could say I – ahh, yeah – mm, probably miss the cheeriness, but the quiet’s more’n worth it.”

Izaya doesn’t respond. He presses his left cheek heavily into the dirty newspaper – to avoid watching it as it happens, his eyes screwed shut as his breath rasps in and out, stinging – and he says absolutely nothing. Thinks absolutely nothing.

And, mercifully, passes clean out to the dull echo of violation.

 

**~~*~~**

 

There is nothing particularly dramatic about what happens later that day – no blaring music, high moments, chases – but to Izaya it’s nothing short of momentous.

He stands.

Sways, falls, and then pulls himself up again. He’s practiced, of course, but only once or twice a day; it’s been so long that even that’s not nearly enough to account for all the time he’s been forced to spend barely moving, the desperate lack of water and nutrients. The physical battery.

He starts with most of his weight balanced against the vertical slope of the wall. And then he walks.

And then he finds the door unlocked, takes a moment to gather his already-flagging strength before pushing through and

out.

There’s an unmade bed in one of the rooms down the hall. Izaya freezes for a moment when he notices the dark space, but that turns out to be unnecessary; his master’s at work, after all, and the apartment is large and echoingly empty. He’s alone and tantalizingly safe.

He totters into the room, sees a dresser with drawers probably stuffed full of clothes – but he can’t stand the thought of wearing anything of that man’s, after all, and anyway he’s openly trembling, terrified out of his mind that he’ll be caught before he can leave properly – so he settles for the sheet off the bed, finds it more or less clean and wraps it tight about himself. At the very least, it smells and looks better than _he_ must.

He runs, then, as fast as he can barely manage. He doesn’t look for a bathroom or food or water. He doesn’t try to find his own clothes, his phone, his wallet – his knives. He can’t imagine fighting his way out, anyway, and there’s no way he’ll talk, not into a machine or to anyone’s face. Not yet.

He runs, maybe just because that’s all he can think to do.

 

**~~*~~**

 

He cries when the smell hits him; burnt-out cigarettes, car exhaust and cold metal. The rocky pavement hurts his bare feet, cuts them, but it has a texture that isn’t carpet or paper or toes curling in hot, dry air, so he likes it. He _loves_ it, he opens his mouth to the air and fears it, too. Fears passing faces, the sweeping space of the city.

He doesn’t remember it being this big, actually – and, actually, he doesn’t remember hating the feeling of curious eyes on him.

He’d stopped running, but the discomfort quickly turns to distrust turns to fear again – and he runs.

A tall man, middle-aged and graying, tries to help him, but he doesn’t recognize the sound coming from the stranger’s mouth as words. That scares him almost as much as the towering form _and what if he knows who I am?_ so he stumbles past with his sheet clutched gingerly to his chest.

The stranger doesn’t follow him.

He wanders like that for a long time, lost. He should know the ins and outs of Ikebukuro, but now it’s all messed up and he can’t remember how to get home. He has no money for a hotel room or taxi, and he’s honestly terrified of running into anyone who might know him – or anyone who might not, the whole lot of accusatory fingers and raised eyebrows and gaping mouths. The bodies on the sidewalks around him seem too close. They’re waiting for him to fall, must be – must be waiting for him to brush close and then they’ll grab him, so he has to get away now before they take him back –

“Izaya?”

He twists to face behind him, eyes wide wide wide, features wildly contorted to force the only expression he can remember how to make of his own accord – that fake, obvious smile, he’d never do it again if he could still do it normally. He tries to greet this newcomer by name, but his voice only stutters out into a broken whimper. He falls to his knees as a sob lodges itself in his throat, and that’s it.

That’s all he can manage.

“What the hell – are you _naked_?”

Izaya shakes his head wildly, but he still chooses to draw the sheet tighter about himself. His bruised-up, sticky, disgusting body.

“Hey,” he hears and startles back when he realizes that Shizuo’s kneeling directly in front of him, now. “Fucking say something, or I’ll walk off and leave you here.”

Izaya bites his lower lip _hard_ – he’s almost made a habit of it, now – before taking a deep breath. It comes in shuddery, leaves in the form of another sob. He shakes his head again.

Shizuo sighs almost inaudibly. Izaya can feel the warm air blow past his forehead, and he stiffens resolutely, let the gravel by the side of the road dig into his skin if that’s what it wants to do.

He hardly feels it, anyway.

“You smell awful,” the blonde hisses. Izaya flinches – he’s close, way too close – but by the time he realizes what’s happening, he’s already floating several feet up and in Shizuo’s arms. There’s no effort in it, not for Shizu-chan, and when Izaya finally manages to look he finds the brute’s eyes narrowed disinterestedly at him.

Blaming him, kind of.

Izaya’s breath catches in his throat before it can turn into a scream. Shizu-chan’s not at all like what he’s been daydreaming about for days, he’s not so docile and he’s likely to lose patience any minute now, kill Izaya or hurt him badly – and he’d just gotten away, too, just thought he’d be some kind of okay –

“Hey,” Shizuo grunts. He sounds uncertain. “I’m not gonna… I mean, I won’t hurt you. Quit looking at me like that.”

_Like what, Shizu-chan? What’s it matter how I look at a protozoan like you?_

Ha – as if he could ever say that now.

Another feeling – something decidedly not the same as fear – makes a painful knot of Izaya’s stomach, then, and he tries so hard to bite back a fresh wave of sobs that it turns into an irregular stream of forceful hiccups. He can feel Shizuo watching him even with his own eyes squeezed shut, but that’s not enough to stem the flow of disgust – at himself, at this situation and at Shizu-chan for the simple act of being here to see it.

Shizuo tries to talk to him a few more times after that, but Izaya doesn’t hear him, doesn’t care. He keeps thinking about that man’s hands on him, that man carrying him, and freedom melts away into a waking nightmare, another anxiety attack and all the terror of remembering.

 

**~~*~~**

 

The note is hard to read, it’s so messy, and Izaya’s vision keeps blurring in and out so much that it takes him more than a minute to figure out what the thing says.

_It you try anything weird, I’ll kill you. Bathroom’s down the hall, so go clean up when you feel like it._

He almost smiles. The last part of it’s kind of nice, actually, especially coming from Shizu-chan. The first is probably the most important, though, because that’s how Shizu-chan’s simple mind works. That’s what he thinks first when he thinks about Izaya; it’s all he can focus on, really, and getting past it must be as hard for that brute as calming down is for the informant.

The open animosity makes it hard, but the almost-smiling-kind-of-nice part helps.

He looks around. He’s still wrapped up tight in his sheet, and there’s a towel flung carelessly over the pillow upon which his head was resting just a second ago. The room’s small but neat, the bed still made with the blankets taut beneath him. The table beside him is empty save for the scribbled-on memo pad and an old alarm clock. The desk on the other side of the room has a lamp, and there are one or two papers peeking out from the drawers beneath that.

Izaya wonders how much use that desk actually gets; it looks pretty worn, but he’s never taken Shizuo for the studious type.

“How long were you gonna gawk for, flea?”

Izaya flinches at the sound of the blonde’s voice, the sudden and commanding appearance of his form in the doorway. He finds himself biting his lip again, hands fisted in the bedcovers at his side; he’s trying not to throw up all over them.

“What?” Shizuo snaps. “If you need to puke –”

Izaya shakes his head and tries again to smile, to show Shizuo that he’s okay, fine, great and perfectly capable of being on his own, after all.

“Knock it off. That’s fuckin’ creepy.”

“Eh?”

“So you _can_ talk,” Shizuo retorts.

Izaya flushes, almost angry now, but he still draws his lips into a tight line and lowers his head to stare wordlessly down at his lap – which isn’t a good decision, either, because that calls up a lot of things at once, leaves him doubled-over and struggling to draw just one breathful of air into his lungs.

This time, Shizuo doesn’t make the mistake of touching Izaya. He comes close, though, and waits awkwardly at his side. Mumbles vague reassurances and probably fidgets a lot to make up for the nervous urge to physically do something.

And Izaya, independent of the boy at his side, comes down slowly. As his mind clears enough that he can finally start to relax his aching muscles, he also manages to take gradually deeper breaths, slow and steady. Safe. He’s safe. He’s never been scared of Shizu-chan, and Shizu-chan hates him but he’s not a bad guy. He won’t do anything right here and now, not as long as Izaya’s this unthreatening.

“What’s with you?” he hisses at last, and Izaya flinches again – finally aware enough to hear it, lightheaded and tear-streaked but conscious. “Did someone” – Shizuo hesitates, fumbles with the hem of his T-shirt – “ah – um, ‘d they hurt you somehow? Or are you sick?”

Izaya stares at the opposite wall and takes another deep breath.

In. Out.

“N-no,” he rasps. Glances back at Shizu-chan, eyebrows drawn up in an unintentional expression of concern, and when nothing happens he takes another deep breath; it hurts his throat. The words sound like a stranger’s – small and afraid, distant. “W-water. Please.”

Shizuo’s frown is back, but he nods, anyway. “There’s milk, too. And some food.”

Izaya closes his eyes. Takes more deep breaths, then manages a smile that’s just a little less forced than all the others.

“Water,” he repeats, “and – food.”

 

**~~*~~**

 

“What are you gonna do now?”

The question startles Izaya. He sets his spoon and the emptied carton of chocolate pudding – _hardly worth wasting on you,_ Shizuo’d grumbled, but if Izaya didn’t know better he’d almost call the look on the blonde’s face _satisfied_ – down on the bedside table. Crinkles his brow and imagines the reaction he’d get if he went home now. He should probably see a doctor, but what would Shinra’s response be?

He shrugs listlessly.

“Fine,” Shizuo groans. “At least tell me what happened. I can call Shinra if that’s what you need. Dunno if he’d come, but it’s better than sitting around here like this. Doubt you wanna be here, anyway.”

“I might,” Izaya mumbles.

“What?”

“I – I might,” the informant tries again, louder this time. His voice still sounds foreign to him, but it’s better than it was before – not grating, just dry, still hurting.

Shizuo stares. “What – really?” He narrows his eyes at Izaya. “Got any weird reasons for that? You’re not planning something, are you?”

“I’m not,” Izaya defends in a monotone. He can’t quite put emotion into it, after all, and the sound of his voice scares him a little even now. He takes a slow breath, lets it go with a sigh. “Hey – Sh-Shizu-chan.”

“Shizuo,” he corrects blandly.

“Shizuo,” Izaya agrees. “Why do you care?”

Shizuo goes quiet for a moment. He looks like he’s starting to get a feel for the gap between what he’s learned to expect and what Izaya currently has to offer; that it’s such an obvious difference hurts a little.

Then – “I don’t. I wish you’d just get lost, but it wouldn’t be right to force you into anything as long as you’re like that. Even though it’s you,” and the blonde sighs. “You probably got yourself into whatever happened, but you might not’ve deserved it – just maybe,” he qualifies quickly.

“Why not?” Izaya finds himself asking; it’s almost an accident. Even having realized what he’s saying, though, he doesn’t stop forming the words deliberately, letting them drop from his tongue, heavy and sad, “I let it happen.”

 

**~~*~~**

 

He doesn’t spend the night at Shizuo’s. The thought of another twenty-four hour cycle of light and dark under someone else’s roof is almost more than he can handle, after all, and then there’s just no way he could ever explain himself to anyone, Shizu-chan especially. He can’t imagine the words hanging in open air, can’t quite decipher the point at which all those painful scenes and images transition into a complete story.

The beginning, middle, and – ridiculously – even the end all have the same feel to them. The atmosphere of dread and humiliation hasn’t changed once since that first brilliant lungful of crisp city air.

Mairu and Kururi don’t look particularly surprised when they come to the front door to find their lost-and-found older brother waiting for them on the other side. They notice Shizuo far more than they do him, actually; their brother has friends, sure – he insists that he does when they ask, at least – but even he can’t remember the last time he brought one home with him.

Shizuo wasn’t the one who insisted on coming, though; it was Izaya, every step of the way down the small path to the road painful until he turned to find Shizuo watching him anxiously. He’d been stumbling along, barely making it on his feet even after several hours of good rest and sustenance, and Shizuo had probably felt compelled to offer himself up as a sort of bodyguard. _No one’ll come near if I’m around,_ he’d suggested. _I’ll – I mean, if you need it, I can even carry you some of the way there._

He doesn’t bother explaining the blonde away as nothing more than an old enemy allowing him some temporary immunity; he’d rather not, not only because he doesn’t want to have to see his sisters not listening or caring – not just because a quiet handful of words still requires a monumental degree of effort on his part – but also because he’s not likely to receive the same careful attention from anyone else from now on.

This is where he takes it all upon himself, really. Shizuo’s no good as a support system, Izaya knows that. But he’s it now, and to lose it is more than just painful; it feels like falling. The sensation in his stomach is the same – it’s in his throat.

“Thanks,” he croaks. “Bye.”

“You gonna be okay like this?” Shizuo fusses, eyes wide. “Would it be alright if I –”

Izaya shakes his head. _Go._

“Iza-nii,” Mairu chimes, “we thought you were dead.” She cranes her neck to scrutinize him with wide and innocent six-turning-seven-year-old eyes – and Izaya can feel something in him start to break again. There’s nothing in her tone that indicates worry – just curiosity, a novelty to be examined and then cast aside at the end of the day.

Kururi mimics her twin sister’s actions, her mouth a near-perfect _O,_ little hands searching for the corner of the enormously baggy T-shirt Izaya’s borrowed from Shizu-chan.

Shizuo smiles uncomfortably at them, then glances back up at Izaya. “Your parents aren’t around?”

Izaya’s stomach constricts; the result is a tight lump in his throat, so all he can do is shake his head with one of his twisted not-smiles awkwardly in place. Mairu sees it and he sees the look on her face – the disgusted one, the one that wants to know what’s wrong with her brother, where he’s gone and who’s come to replace him now.

 

**~~*~~**

 

His parents aren’t unhappy to see him, but the teary hugs and concerned questions barely manage to make a dent in the ache of loneliness. He asks them about the police, blankly suggests that they should call to let them know he’s fine, but their awkward response – exchanging a silent look, lips pursed or pressed into uneasy lines – tells him all he needs to know – that no one bothered to call about him. That they’ve been waiting altogether too patiently here for him to get back – but how can they tell him that now, as half-dead with exhaustion as he probably looks?

“Got it,” he mutters, hands fisting at his sides. “Tired,” and he drags himself back up and into his room. Creaks the door shut, buries his face in a pillow and tries to remind himself that this isn’t any different from what it’s always been; he’s never really had friends, not close ones, and the distance he was always after is exactly what he’s experiencing now.

The only thing wrong about this is that he suddenly feels like he _needs_ someone to be at his side.

He wonders if his phone has any messages on it, but that’s before he remembers where it probably is. And then he has to deal with a splitting headache and the sharp pressure behind his eyes. He has to bury his cries in a pillow that won’t ever get the chance to dry, has to force the fear down until he can breathe normally on his own.

It’s great, hilarious even – that he somehow managed to get himself out of one four-cornered prison of a room just to find himself in another – and this one his own.

 

**~~*~~**

 

“Izaya? There’s a call for you…”

“Can’t,” he croaks, hardly caring that he sounds as messy as he feels. He hasn’t showered once since parting ways with Shizu-chan, and it’s been maybe two or three days already. His face seems to be permanently sticky already. “I – I’m changing my clothes.”

His mother is so quiet for a moment that Izaya wonders if she’s gone already – but then she calls him again, sounding more worried than before. “It’s Kishitani Shinra-kun,” she explains. “He says it’s important.”

Izaya draws a shaky breath before refusing again.

“Izaya –”

“I can’t,” he repeats.

“Oh – yes, well,” he hears, and it takes him an embarrassingly long moment to realize that her change in tone isn’t intended for him. “If you’re willing to wait, I suppose that’s fine…”

Izaya doubts it until he manages to detect the faint tap of the phone being set down on the floor in front of his door. He swallows thickly and waits for an explanation.

“It’s still connected, dear,” his mother calls. “I don’t know how long your friend plans on waiting, but you can take your time if you need to.”

He takes a deep breath to steady himself; it doesn’t help the nervous fluttering in his stomach. “Sure.”

The moment his mother’s footsteps disappear down the stairs, he lowers himself to the floor and gradually works his way onto two feet. The door feels incredibly far away, but a few teetering inches in its direction close the distance quickly. He can hardly breathe, and it’s not exertion – not exactly, anyway.

“Hey,” he whispers to the crack between his door and the hallway beyond it. He should feel like an idiot, but it wouldn’t hurt to at least hear something like a response in return.

There’s nothing.

He presses his lips together and slowly, slowly pulls the door open.

Picks up the phone and holds it gingerly to his ear.

“Hey,” he repeats, as breathless as if he’s been out running.

“Izaya-kun.”

He sounds so _calm –_ no, matter-of-fact. Business-like, even.

“Need something?” Izaya all but chokes, voice strangling in his throat as he retreats back into the suffocating safety of his room.

“Shizuo-kun told me what happened,” Shinra sighs. “Do you plan on sulking forever, or should I come over?”

Izaya swallows back a nervous whimper, licks his cracked-and-bleeding lips. “You don’t – you don’t know what happened – right?”

“…Should I?”

“N-no,” Izaya gasps. “It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t sound like nothing. You’ve been gone a lot longer than usual, you know. ”

Izaya laughs, but the sound’s mostly just hysterical. “Someone noticed, then? How reassuring. I’m flattered, even.”

“Izaya-kun,” Shinra hisses back, sounding alarmed. “Tell me what happened.”

“I can’t.”

“You keep saying that –”

“I can’t,” he sighs. “I can’t – just – can’t, Shinra, sorry. It’s – not that easy. And I’m blowing it way out of proportion, anyway,” he tries, shifting tactics to brush it all off and call it done. “It’s not important.”

“Come to school, then.”

Nausea. “I can’t do that.”

“And why not?”

“What do you care?” Izaya spits, confidence – anger – colliding restlessly with hopelessness. “Am I suddenly that interesting to you and Shizu-chan? After enduring that kind of humiliation – what’s so hard to understand – ah.” He realizes it too late.

“Humiliation?”

“No,” Izaya bites. “Never mind.”

“…I might be able to help, you know. Tonight, even.”

There’s that familiar twisting sensation again; it’s like being split clean in two, a child offered a treat and tempted by the urge to reject it because the reward inevitably means compromise. “You have school tomorrow.”

“So do you. And it’s still only six,” Shinra responds coolly.

“I’m not hurt.”

Shinra waits quietly for a moment. Then – “If you need me to run a few blood tests to check for – you know –”

Izaya does know; he squeezes the phone tight in his hand and then throws it with all the force he can muster – not much – at the nearest wall.

 

**~~*~~**

 

He wouldn’t put it past Shinra to come by regardless, though, so he takes the opportunity to shower – with his eyes squeezed shut, fingers grazing bare skin as sparingly as possible. The water doesn’t make him feel any cleaner – he doubts that it will for a long time yet – but his appearance is all that matters for now, anyway.

His hair’s gotten a bit long, but it’ll have to work for as long as it’ll take him to get over the idea of having it cut. He’s pale enough to look genuinely sick, but that’s probably a good thing – an excuse, like the dark spots under his eyes and the tired fading of the black and bright red of his hair and eyes.

He’s just been sick – that’s all.

He goes to bed late, finds a spare uniform from middle school tucked away in a corner of his room and hangs it up for morning. The sight of the thing sends shivers rolling up and down his spine, but it’s a physical symbol of normalcy to everyone else; he has to wear it.

Maybe but not really because of that, he barely sleeps. He keeps remembering, and remembering means at least one attack of needless anxiety, his heart waling away at the rest of his organs and a quick trip to the bathroom to empty his stomach of the next to nothing he’s been putting into it.

 

**~~*~~**

 

He’s called down to the faculty room by their homeroom teacher even before the start of class.

“We’re concerned about the choices you’re making, Orihara-kun.” Izaya steels himself so that he won’t flinch when he hears that name coming from an adult – the tone, the same old voice all over again – and he manages it, somehow, smirks briefly before turning it into a polite smile and listening patiently. “As things stand now, you should still have enough attendance to move on to your next year, but I certainly hope I don’t need to discourage you from missing any more days.”

“Of course,” he responds. And then he narrows his eyes slightly, lets the smirk slide back into place and adds, “But if you were really concerned, sensei, shouldn’t you have at least reported my absence to my parents?” He’s not always listening when they try to talk to him, but he’s close to certain that they have yet to say anything about school or all the days he’s missing.

The teacher straightens and frowns imperiously at him. “As a matter of fact,” he counters, “the school called your home multiple times. Your parents said they’d see what they could do.” He leans close with that look that now reads – patronizingly – _I only want to help you._ “You don’t want to disappoint them, do you?”

Izaya feels a little like laughing. This is clumsy of him, really; he doesn’t get chewed out by teachers – because, after all, he’s supposed to be relatively well-liked despite his usual attendance (the lack thereof) and attitude. He’s supposed to be good at avoiding prying eyes. He doesn’t know what it’s like to worry about disappointing others – because what do their feelings really matter, anyway?

His entire body jerks to face the door. He hopes he looks as irritated as he feels. He hopes it’s not obvious that this man frightens him in a way that only relatively young adults can, now – that he reminds him of the man he learned to call master.

“That’s a two-way road, sir.”

 

**~~*~~**

 

Shinra and Shizuo are there and talking when Izaya returns to the classroom. Shinra spots him first and immediately straightens in his seat, eyes wide. Shizuo takes a minute, then turns with a look of unhappy presentiment on his face; his reaction to Izaya’s cheerful wave confirms that he more or less expected to see the informant there.

“Miss me?” Izaya chirps, taking an unoccupied seat near the other two and pulling it just a bit closer.

“Izaya…”

He raises an eyebrow and grins at Shinra. “What? Don’t tell me you’re that happy to see me back. Or have you already started to forget what I look like?”

Shinra’s anxious frown deepens slightly. “Are you sure you’re okay, being here already?” He lowers his voice. “And last night?”

“You told me to come,” Izaya retorts, voice now just a bit flatter that it’d been before.

“That’s true,” Shinra acknowledges, exchanging an uncomfortable look with Shizuo. “But that was before you hung up on me for asking – you know.”

“I don’t,” Izaya laughs. “The phone cut out, and I was too exhausted to bother calling you back. Sorry.”

Shizuo clears his throat, shifting awkwardly in his seat. “I bet,” he huffs.

“I wouldn’t if I were you, Shizu-chan. Someone with your IQ’s bound to lose.”

Shizuo splutters his way through a mixed bag of stunned syllables before he can manage to work out a complete sentence. “What – I _saved_ your sorry ass, louse! How about a little gratitude?!”

Izaya forces himself to smirk, fingers drumming the smooth surface of some stranger’s desk, and then he leans close to Shizuo, a proximity that stabs all the way through to the informant’s raw insecurities, his heart hammering painfully in his chest – “How about we don’t mention that anymore, okay? I’m sure you wouldn’t like the repercussions otherwise.”

Shizuo stares wordlessly at him for a moment, then grinds his teeth together and turns away.

“Whatever. Get better on your own, then. Bastard flea.”

 

**~~*~~**

 

Only a small handful of people ask him where he’s been all this time, and those are mostly girls and disgruntled teachers. A few guys cast curious glances in his direction, but that’s probably more because of the rumor already going around – the one about Heiwajima Shizuo managing to stay calm in the same room as Orihara Izaya, inches away and _talking._

He ignores that. It’s rather clumsy of him, but pretending that at least some of this never happened is probably the best way to move forward now; if he can erase it, he’ll be okay. If he can nullify the effect everything’s had on him – and on Shizuo, too – it’ll be as good as if it had never happened – not that he’ll forget, of course.

That, he definitely can’t do.

He doesn’t share many classes with Shinra, Shizuo, or Kadota, but the ones they do have in common come and go with the constant sensation of being watched closely, pored over, scrutinized. He can feel their eyes on him even when they’re not looking – he knows they’re not, knows they don’t care as much as that – but that’s why he acts the way he does, anyway.

He smiles and waves and exudes all the pumped-up confidence of the Izaya from before. He doesn’t let himself think about anything else, so, yes – the concentration is exhausting, the buzz of adrenaline enough to leave him shaking between classes – he runs to the bathroom, then, two times and counting – and has to empty his stomach each time before going back.

He doesn’t observe his peers. He doesn’t know how they’ve changed or what they’re doing with themselves now, and – _he’d do anything to go back_ – he doesn’t care.

The first high point of his day is the ringing of the bell that releases them all to lunch. He’s fatigued mentally as well as physically and emotionally by then – and the day’s only half-over, when did school ever drag on for this long? – so he puts no thought into where he carries himself, just makes a beeline for the stairs leading up to the roof and tries not to look like he’s literally falling through the door when he reaches it.

His vision’s blurring again, so he gives up on scanning his surroundings and simply collapses to the ground – arms haphazardly working as a pillow, brow wet and breath coming quick. The way he’s sprawled tiredly on the concrete, he hopes he’ll look at least sort of normal to anyone who might happen to pass by.

“Hey.”

Izaya startles upright, blinking dazedly and trying to make sense of the voice above him. “Wha…?”

“You’d be better off resting in the nurse’s office, you know.”

“Shizuo – Shizu-chan,” Izaya mumbles. He pretends that there aren’t tears welling in his eyes as he adds, “I’m tired, so if you wouldn’t mind leaving me alone this time, that’d be great. You’re blocking the sun.”

“You’re the one who should move,” Shizuo snaps. “Keep that up and you’ll get sick for real.”

“Mind your own business, Shizu-chan.”

“I am.”

“ _I’m_ not your business,” Izaya retorts. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“You’re the idiot!” Shizuo snaps. “Do you even have a good reason to refuse help all the time?” – Izaya cringes – “You’re not fooling anyone, acting like that. You look like you’re about to fucking lose it.”

Izaya catches himself chewing on his lip again; he stops with a low sigh before returning his attention to Shizuo. “Bothering me like this – is it supposed to be your way of making up for the kind of person you are, Shizu-chan? I’m not interested in boosting your ego for you, so how about we call it quits already?”

Izaya has less than a second to flinch back again before Shizuo sinks his fist into the concrete by his leg. The informant can’t entirely stifle the stunned yelp that bubbles up in his chest as a few bits of loosed gravel zoom past his face. Shizuo’s hand looks like it’s bleeding, now, and a quiet wince as he pulls it close to his chest confirms that it’s probably broken, too.

“It’s not like that,” he snarls. “I just hate idiots who won’t take care of themselves.”

“Aren’t you also one of those idiots?” Izaya wonders, eyeing the blonde’s ruined hand.

Shizuo just shakes his head. “Can’t hit you, so,” he indicates the concrete. “That’s the best I can do. But I’m still trying, anyway.”

“Trying to ruin the school building?” Izaya mocks. “It’s already pretty old, after all. Shouldn’t be too hard for you.”

Shizuo stays quiet for a moment. His head is tilted slightly, his gaze fixed on his hand and the fine stream of red liquid lining the edge of his index finger, escaping every few moments to form a very small pool on the ground below. It had to have hurt pretty bad – hitting it hard enough to leave it dripping like that.

“I’m just trying to – y’know, do what I can with what I get. Overcome the hard stuff, I guess. It sounds dumb, but – hell, it’s better than what you’re doing.”

“That’s such a cliché, Shizu-chan…”

“And pretending not to know anything isn’t?”

“I don’t care if it is,” Izaya mumbles, eyes fluttering closed once more. He leans back and pillows his head on his arms again. “Won’t you be a good protozoan and get lost now?”

“Only if you don’t mind going with me,” Shizuo says. There’s no room for argument in his voice.

Izaya opens his eyes again and shivers involuntarily. “Don’t touch me,” he warns, voice suddenly thready.

Shizuo looks like he’s just been slapped in the face. “What? I already said I wasn’t gonna hurt you. Or” – he draws a shaky breath – “Shinra was right, after all, wasn’t he? You were…”

Izaya stills, hands and feet suddenly ice-cold, eyes wide and brimming with presciently stunned tears. “I was – was what, Shizu-chan?”

A tense moment of silence passes between them; it lingers for a while before Shizuo finally decides to say something.

“Never mind. Sorry. That was wrong of me, wasn’t it?”

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya breathes. His voice is shaking, rising and falling now, but he tightens his hands into fists and sits up again. “What did Shinra tell you?”

“Never mind, Izaya,” Shizuo repeats. “It’s not fair if you don’t bring it up first.”

“It’s not fair for you to approach me like this without at least putting all your cards on the table,” Izaya rasps. “Please.”

The pleading note in his voice must be pretty sharp, then, because Shizuo turns to look at him with eyes that pity, pity, pity.

(Izaya hates that.)

“Doesn’t matter if it’s wrong,” he mumbles, “but I guess if I were you… and it actually happened… I wouldn’t wanna be reminded of something like that, either.”

“Of – of rape, you mean,” Izaya all but chokes, laughing a little at the end – the hysterical one, lips quirking up, a bitter smile, he thought he’d rather die than say it but there it is and there’s Shizuo, unsurprised and sad.

Sad.

“I – actually – I’ll go, after all,” he offers. “Just this once.”

“Don’t,” Izaya whispers. “If it’s because you feel sorry for me, Shizu-chan, that’s the last thing I want.”

Shizuo looks surprised. “Then what?”

“Would you…”

Deep breath. In. Out.

“Would you hear me out?”

 

**~~*~~**

 

He winds up putting words to the events, after all, but what he actually tells Shizuo is not the truth; it’s a watered-down summary. It doesn’t include what he thought, what he felt, whose faces he couldn’t forget in the midst of long hours and the stunning pointlessness of desperation. Fear. It doesn’t even begin to touch on how he feels now or the intensity with which he – just – _wishes_ –

He wishes that someone had come to help him. He hates that he wishes that. He hates that he’s weak. That he was powerless to stop it. That he’s never felt truly lonely or paranoid until now, and that it’s now far too late to go looking for companionship in all the wrong places.

He hates that his resolution to isolate himself from all of them _because it’s pointless and dangerous and terrifying_ can’t stand up to the gaping hole in his psyche.

He wonders when Shizu-chan will tire of this game of compassion. He wonders how long it’ll be until he can no longer rely on someone like that idiot to listen without openly reacting or judging or – or even speaking.

Because it was obvious – when Izaya could stand to look him in the eyes – that Shizuo was paying attention. There was a look in his eyes that lacked all of the blame and none of the horror – like a mirror, almost, except that he was trying hard to remain at least somewhat composed. For Izaya. And when it was over, he didn’t try to justify or dismiss it. He didn’t touch Izaya with any kind of force. He offered him a hand up, and when Izaya refused to take it – he withdrew it quietly.

With several classes still left in the day, Shizuo joined him in skipping school, brought him all the way back to his own home and even now is standing with him on the porch.

Saying nothing.

“Shizu-chan…”

“Yeah?”

He tries to force a laugh, but it doesn’t quite make it past the permanent lump in his throat. “I really, really hate this, you know?” He sniffles and swipes uselessly at his eyes – too late, because the tears are already streaking his cheeks, staining them a splotchy red on pasty white. “I want you to leave,” he chokes, leaning heavily into the wall by his front door, “but I – if I let you –”

“Hey,” Shizuo soothes, voice soft, word elongated. It’s like a sigh. “Hey, Izaya… I – I’m sorry, I should’ve kept my mouth shut, after all, right?”

“How should I know?” Izaya groans, sinking to the ground at Shizuo’s feet and feeling well and truly pathetic – couldn’t be more so, definitely, there’s just no way. “I don’t even feel like watching over humans anymore.” He doesn’t even feel like calling them _his_ humans anymore.

“Guess I don’t mind that,” Shizuo jokes wryly as he stoops to kneel a few feet away from the informant. “I know it’s probably not gonna help if _I_ say it, but you know… that’s not the only thing that makes you… ah, whatever you are. Like, your attitude and the way you think. And you’re still a pretty good actor, I guess.”

 _Even if I_ could _see right through you._

Izaya stifles a sob and shakes his head. “None of that _means_ anything, Shizu-chan.”

“Well, you’re alive.”

“That – doesn’t mean anything, either…”

“Don’t say that!”

He grabs Izaya’s hand before the informant can finish processing what’s just been said – and then his chocolate brown eyes are there to bore into Izaya’s red-rimmed ones. The sensation of bare skin in direct contact with Izaya’s terrifies him for a moment, but it’s just a moment. It ends and he moans low and looks hesitatingly at the muscles standing out in Shizuo’s arm. They’re not really tensed up; his hand doesn’t hurt.

He swallows thickly and steels himself and shifts slightly forward.

Shizuo draws a startled breath and starts to let go, but not before Izaya closes his eyes and – trying not to think too hard – hides his face in Shizuo’s chest. Fists his hands in his shirt. Doesn’t stop crying, but it all hurts a little less when Shizuo wraps his arms around him and _hugs_ – so gently that Izaya would never have guessed at the strength there if he hadn’t known already.

“I should go…” the blonde mumbles after a while.

Izaya stirs upright and away from the solid comfort of the embrace – it’s like a cage that protects instead of trapping, warm and close and new – and notices himself stiffening by degrees until his breath is back to coming just a bit ragged again. He’s forgotten to mark the passage of time, but he knows without that that it hasn’t been nearly long enough.

Not as long as his own house is looming big and dark and empty, full of rooms and corners and whispers that could as easily be threats as nothing at all. Not knowing how it’ll be without someone to take his mind off of the lingering pain and cold dread.

“You should,” he agrees.

“Um, also – thanks,” Shizuo mutters. “I wasn’t lying when I said I wasn’t doing this to put myself on a pedestal or whatever, but… it’s kinda new for me, being trusted like that. I mean, ‘cause of everything… you know. Even if it’s you, I appreciate it. I – I won’t let you down.”

“My, how old-fashioned of you,” Izaya teases with a half-hearted shrug. “I’m not handing a job down to you or anything formal like that.”

“I know,” Shizuo sighs. “But I’m the first one, right?”

Izaya doesn’t need any clarification to know what Shizuo means. “Mm. Don’t tell anyone – not even Shinra or Kasuka-kun. Okay?”

“Like I would,” Shizuo hisses. “And – and that’s what I mean, kinda. I swear I won’t betray that – um – I’ll also help. Even though it’s you,” he repeats.

“Ah,” Izaya all but croaks. “Right – why _is_ it me, Shizu-chan? Why do anything to help from the get-go? Because I’m that pathetic?”

“You already asked me that, remember?”

Izaya shakes his head – a lie. He remembers, but he wants – needs – to hear it again.

“It’s not because you’re… _pathetic._ It just wouldn’t’ve felt right to leave you alone like that. Maybe you wouldn’t do the same thing if our positions were switched, but I don’t think I’m really that bad a guy.”

“Hmm? So Shizu-chan’s just that chivalrous, is that it?”

“That’s not funny,” Shizuo chuckles dryly. “And anyway, y’know – you’re _allowed_ to be pathetic – or just whatever you wanna call it. Don’t push yourself to get over it faster, alright?”

“You sound a little like Shinra,” Izaya manages. “Is it because of him?”

“No – no way,” Shizuo dismisses, sounding vaguely disgusted. “‘S that even a good thing?”

“Seems like the right thing to say…”

“Oh,” Shizuo says lamely. “That’s. Good. Um, thanks…”

“Mm.”

“I’m going,” Shizuo decides again.

“Come again,” Izaya offers. “Soon.”

“Sure. I guess – I mean, if it gets really bad or anything, just call. You have my number, don’t you?”

Izaya smirks a little despite himself. “What do you take me for, Shizu-chan?”

 

**~~*~~**

 

He hesitates for a long time by the interior-facing side of the front door. He listens to Shizuo’s footsteps gradually disappearing, and then he shoves all of his dwindling weight up against the worn wood. His house is quiet, mostly, but the negligible creaks and groans of it settling around him might as well be ten men armed with guns and knives waiting to catch Izaya off guard.

Take him back.

He remembers suddenly that, yes, he _has_ Shizuo’s phone number, but he doesn’t have it memorized – and, of course, the only place he ever had it recorded was his phone, which is lost and gone and useless.

So he can’t call Shizu-chan, after all.

He shakes his head and trades shoes for slippers, forces himself to walk into the house and past secret corners and dark rooms. He has to make progress on his own, so at the very least he’s not going to be the coward who turns on every light in the house; he heads straight for the kitchen, instead, and downs two tall glasses of water in an attempt at washing away some of the anxiety.

And, actually, he still can’t help marveling at his newly rediscovered right to satisfy his body’s needs like that: thirst, hunger – even sleep, at the very least whenever he can dispel the nightmares for long enough to get any.

Izaya’s tired now, too, so with the heaviness of fatigue and apprehension weighing on him, he slumps up the stairs and into his room.

His cell phone and wallet are lying on his bed.

On his bed.

In his house, in his room.

As if they’d been there all along.

There’s a note held face-down by the phone. The paper looks like it was ripped from a hotel’s notepad, but there’s no logo left anywhere on it. It’s badly wrinkled and coffee-stained in one spot, but reading it is anything but difficult; the handwriting is far neater than Shizuo’s.

_It’s been fun, Orihara-kun. He’s quite a looker, you know._

 

**~~*~~**

 

He has no choice; he ignores Shizuo the next time he sees him.

He doesn’t taunt or touch him, doesn’t so much as glance in his general direction. He phases him out of existence in a matter of days, and never once does he react to the blonde’s pleas for attention, the cries of _what the hell are you thinking, did something happen, I can help_ – because that’s no good, no help, dangerous.

His master doesn’t appreciate the disloyalty. If he goes out on a limb for the tenuous thing being offered to him by Shizuo, he’s risking far more than he stands to gain; he’s only making the inevitable, awful end worse than it has to be.

So he sleeps. He wakes up. He goes to school. He comes straight home. He hides in his room.

He waits.

 

**~~*~~**

 

“You’ve lost more weight.”

“Have I?” Izaya wonders distractedly. “Hmm.”

“I’m worried about both of you, Izaya-kun,” Shinra insists. “Shizuo-kun’s starting to look almost as bad as you were before. He’s been getting into a lot more fights on his own lately, too.”

Izaya starts to deny that that’s any problem of his, but he stops himself and goes with a simple shrug instead.

“I see. Well, I can hardly force you,” Shinra mutters, sounding angry. “Just bear in mind that you’re not only hurting yourself at this point. And I doubt it’s as hopeless as you’re thinking.”

Izaya sighs. “Ne – what’s today?”

“Today?”

“Mm.”

“Tuesday.”

A pause.

“Are you really such a mess that you can’t even remember the date, Izaya-kun?”

“I haven’t kept good track lately,” Izaya mumbles dazedly. “Can’t sleep well – insomnia,” he quickly interjects. “Hey, if you’re so eager to help or whatever this is, why not try bringing me something strong enough to blow that problem away?”

Shinra shakes his head and scoffs. “As if I’d trust you with anything like that right now.”

“If I were planning on committing suicide, I’d definitely do it more flashily than that,” Izaya argues almost-but-not-very defensively. “It’s a big city, Shinra. Imagine the possibilities. You’d be noticed for an instant, and then” – he makes two fists of his hands and then opens them all at once – “you’d disappear just like that. That’s the trade-off in a place like this.”

Shinra stares. “Don’t talk about things like that so nonchalantly…”

“I’m not ‘nonchalant,’” Izaya retorts. “I’m tired.”

 

**~~*~~**

 

The nightmares get progressively worse.

It’s the Thursday following his conversation with Shinra – just over a week since his first day back and that isolated moment of relaxation he experienced wrapped up in Shizuo’s arms – when he wakes up early in the morning from what was supposed to have been a quick nap.

The dream is about drowning. That’s all, really – no vague plotlines or incredible excuses. Beginning, middle, and end, his lungs feel like they’re being ripped out, his head throbs, he claws and swallows water – and, suddenly and terrifyingly dead, he floats without feeling in something lonely, meaningless, forgotten.

He disappears.

And then he wakes up to the same breathless feeling. The rational part of his mind screams that it’s another panic attack, that he’s losing it for nothing, but the part with eyes and ears realizes differently.

That he’s not drowning or dreaming or alone.

“Quiet, now,” his master soothes. “Wouldn’t want your family hurt over something like this, would we?”

 

**~~*~~**

 

“Hey.”

Izaya whirls around to face the voice before he can remind himself not to.

“Sh-Shizu-chan,” he croaks, then shakes his head and sinks his teeth into his lower lip – just exactly like that man did last night, the bruise and the blood still left there to compliment the faint taste of his saliva. The overwhelming scent of cum, of sweat. The lingering echo of his muffled sobs, of all the things he was forced to whisper.

“Hang on,” Shizuo all but yells when Izaya tries to turn and run; the shock of the noise has him stumbling blindly forward, almost falling. He gasps and suppresses a shudder even as Shizuo lowers his voice and tries again. “Wait, please.”

“I – I – I can’t,” Izaya stammers back. “L-late.”

“What? For school?”

Izaya nods desperately and shifts minutely back when Shizuo tries to get closer. His eyes are blown wide, but he’s not seeing well at all – mostly the blurred impressions of what he can make out through a constant kind of tunnel vision – so when he does finally collapse, he’s left panting unevenly, fully disoriented and temporarily unable to distinguish Shizuo’s shape in a thin crowd of unconcerned passersby.

He realizes late that Shizuo’s calling him, that his hands are on his shoulders.

“Nn,” he breathes. “D-don’t – _Shizu-chan_ –”

“Sorry!” Shizuo realizes, immediately releasing his hold on the informant; Izaya slumps back to the ground and presses his palm weakly to it. He can’t quite push his way upright, though, so he lets himself be.

“I might – I might not be able to –”

“Are you sure you can manage school?” Shizuo interrupts, finishing before Izaya has to force the sentence on his own.

A spasm shakes all of his thin frame. “Can’t go home,” he rasps.

Quiet. Then – “Come with me, then. To my place.”

Through a haze of fear, Izaya can only remember how to shake his head and heave a sob as the tears start to streak his face in earnest. “Won’t matter, he’ll come –”

“Not to me,” Shizuo snarls. “If he does, I swear I’ll kill him.”

“Let go,” Izaya wails, even though no one’s touching him anymore. “I don’t – need y-you –”

By some miracle, he even manages to sway unsteadily to his feet without help. Shizuo rises with him, and Izaya can see him, the hurt, afraid look on his face. “Yeah? Try walking a few feet.”

“Leave me alone…”

“You got away once without anyone,” Shizuo suggests. “I’ll help you do it again.”

“He was careless,” Izaya groans. “Like me. I – I don’t care anymore, Shizu-chan, so get lost before – before you make it worse.”

“That’d be as good as killing you myself, idiot!”

“Great,” Izaya snaps. “Just what Shizu-chan always wanted.”

 

**~~*~~**

 

He tries to reason with himself as he struggles his way back home.

Shizuo’s right in at least one way; he did manage it once – _escape_ – but it really was only because his master had been nothing if not careless. He’d also had the benefit of Shizuo’s inadvertent help – the broken arm, the added pressure and distraction – and his lingering will to live then had been enough – if only barely – to fuel that simple game of pretend.

Now, he has nothing in particular to fight for. His best didn’t stop it, after all, so what can he hope to gain from friends who hardly cared when he vanished for something like two weeks without a word? Pride may not be high on his list of values anymore, but the prospect of relying on anyone who could think of him so secondarily is thoroughly disgusting – and to do anything as long as it might mean letting more and more people see him for the shameful, pathetic thing he is –

Rage. Futile, desperate rage. Reckless, restless, sudden and clawing to get out.

He needs… _something._ He needs to let it go before the pointlessness of it reduces him to a mess of hyperventilation and cold sweats in the middle of the street.

He remembers his knife – not the one that was never returned to him, but the one – the several – that he’s always kept hidden in his room, just in case –

and

just

maybe.

What if he could do it? What if he died trying? Would that really be any worse than letting this go on? If he could leave some mark, some memory, then would his eventual fade to black be as thorough as he imagines it nightly? Death would probably be kinder either way, and then if that didn’t happen – well –

What would it feel like to be free again?

 

**~~*~~**

 

He half expects it to become a moot point before he can so much as come close to solidifying that resolve; he imagines the house teeming with sweaty hands and sharp-tongued threats, insults. Arms and bodies coiled tight with brute force. He expects to be caught with his guard down – because it’s never up, or maybe because he’s just never fully prepared. (He’s always some kind of scared, darting eyes and shivery, tense muscles that couldn’t run if he begged them to.)

He gasps almost painfully when his phone vibrates noisily on the bed. It’s the first sound he’s heard, making his careful, legs-giving-out way up the stairs and into the relative safety of his room. He sees no one there, but a voice in the back of his head won’t stop crying that he can’t be sure of that, that his so-called master is never very far away.

Hands shaking, he picks it up to check the caller ID.

Shizuo – he sighs, now trembling with relief. Shinra must have given that idiot his number, which means both a weird kind of future comfort – the one-sided reminder that there is at least one idiot who stubbornly continues to care – and the relative calm of isolation now; he’s glad that Shizuo (probably) had the good sense not to follow him here.

He doesn’t answer, of course, but he does find a soft pair of sweatpants with a nondescript, too-big T-shirt. He digs around and comes up with bandages, a long roll of them which he then tightens about the thinnest part of his waist – _very_ thin, when was the last time he ate a full meal? – once, twice, as many times as it takes to form an even layer that doesn’t stand out beneath the baggy shirt.

He gathers up three knives, switch-blades, and pockets them between the fine gauze and his skin – already sweating.

He forces himself to inspect his profile in a mirror. He can’t see the clumsily concealed weapons – a good start – but he _can_ see the pasty whiteness of his skin, the mess of tangled and growing-long black hair that’s starting to fall into the line of his vision. It tickles the back of his neck, snakes past his ears and seems ready to reach all the way to his shoulders. His cheeks have hollowed out, though not nearly as much as he would’ve expected them to, given the mess of rail-thin skin and bones that is the rest of him.

It’s awful, _he’s_ awful – and he turns quickly away.

He gives his legs the same treatment as his torso, arms himself up like a soldier in over his head – _never bring a knife to a gunfight,_ and he almost laughs, almost – and turns, feet light and flinching, to his bed.

The trembling starts soon after, and it doesn’t ever come close to stopping – not for hours, no matter how intense his focus on comforting images and fond thoughts becomes. His uneven breathing tests the boundaries of the bandages’ tight press, pushes at and fights it and is punctuated by the regular vibrations of his phone from its lonely place on his bedside table.

His hand shakes every time he goes to check it, and every time it’s Shizu-chan.

The attention is almost more comforting than intimidating, but the implicit expectation is still its own kind of pressure. And if the brute’s being watched, too? Just how far has his mas – no, his rapist, he reminds himself sluggishly – how far has he gone?

Is he safe – is Shizuo –?

He finally manages to hold the phone still in his hands for more than a few desperate moments. He manages to tap out a quick message, manages to cut out every simple mistake so that the sentences come out careful and correct.

_I can’t talk now, but wait. Please wait. Don’t do anything stupid._

He only has to shiver his way through a minute or less of silence before Shizuo texts him back.

_Not gonna wait a long time, but okay. Don’t do anything stupid, yourself, idiot._

 

**~~*~~**

 

With Shizuo’s calls and texts thus silenced, Izaya’s as good as beside himself when the man does come. His parents and sisters have already gone to bed – mostly without bothering him, of course, because at this point they must know not to expect much more than distance and delirium – and the house is at its darkest.

“Were you waiting long?”

Izaya moans softly and blinks to dispel the sudden dizziness. “O-only hours,” he tries to joke. “Y-you –” He stops, finding that he can’t remember the taunt he’d been just about to attempt. “I – I –”

“My, but aren’t we eager,” the man immediately surmises. “And you should be, I suppose. My work’s been going rather poorly, but perhaps you knew that already?”

As a matter of fact, he’d suspected it at one time – that this could-be-naïve newcomer to the competitive world of business might not be able to make the cut for long. (It turned out to be true of Izaya, anyway.)

But he can’t say or indicate that, both because he’s frozen with discomfort and because he can’t stand to risk the loss of his one and only chance. If his clothes are torn away without his making any move, that will be it. Maybe _really_ it, or at least _it_ as in the end of this tenuous freedom. Maybe more physical scarring, obvious, a retaliation. Maybe a trip back to that quiet, lonely room with its high window and unlocked door.

“As you might expect, I had to take quite some liberties to come tonight,” the man continues absent-mindedly, startling Izaya. “And I haven’t got a lot of time to waste on formalities.”

 _Do you ever?_ the informant wants to ask, rhetorically, but he restrains himself again and remains mostly silent – just forces a nod and hoarse laughter.

“That’s more like it…”

But he doesn’t stop laughing, not until the man’s eyes narrow and his eyebrow arches distractedly.

“I hardly expected such a –”

Immediately, Izaya sees his chance and seizes it. He’s so scared out of his mind that it comes to him more through reflex than via calculation; it’s almost as natural as the shudder that passes through him and the choked-off shout as he slips back, frees two blades and holds them to the thrumming point of speech and hot blood in his attacker’s throat.

“Don’t move,” he snarls, feral, terrified animal instinct to survive defend fight – _Shizuo,_ he remembers vaguely. He swallows back a soft noise of surprise before adding, “I doubt it’s _your_ blood you’d prefer to see all over my sheets in the morning.”

“Playing rough,” the man chuckles as the initial shock wears thin. “I like it.”

Izaya’s smile is real but wrong: uncontrolled, maniacal. Animal.

“Call the police for me,” he hisses. “Unless you’re sure you want it rougher.”

“Interesting,” the man laughs again. “Orihara Izaya. You’re as resilient as they said, after all. I shouldn’t have let my guard down quite so soon, it seems.”

“You heard me,” Izaya bites, ignoring the obvious provocation. “Call.”

He’s never threatened anyone with a knife in this kind of situation – the kind not fully initiated or controlled by him, the threatening kind – too crass, too straightforward, hands-on, dangerous.

Dangerous. Again, he’s reminded of Shizuo, of the dangerous that was everything before now and his every clumsy slip-up – and, again, he almost laughs.

“Oh, but Orihara-kun,” the man chuckles. Izaya twitches but stands his ground; he’s terribly conscious of the fact that letting it slip even slightly this time would be tantamount to committing suicide.

“Orihara-kun,” the man repeats. “I might prefer it rough, after all.”

Izaya swallows thickly and shakes his head. He pushes the sharp edge of one knife up and into exposed flesh – just hard enough to draw a sliver of blood. “You’ve certainly had your fun, haven’t you?” he smiles, voice wavering. “Sorry to disappoint, but I wouldn’t get ahead of yourself if I were you, _sir._ ”

The man says nothing, then, but there’s a dangerous spark in his eyes that looks a lot like anger. Izaya breathes shallowly as the smooth metal and plastic of sheathed knives poke his belly, his legs bent with his knees digging into the mattress. He’s kneeling in front of this man and that’s not so different from what it _has_ been – except that now this bastard is in the same position. His hands are still, one at his side and the other stuck in a cast; Izaya watches them and the tiny flickers of emotion that may predict action before it happens.

“Shall I call, then?” he decides, tone relaxedly casual.

Izaya frowns as the man’s good hand drops to his pocket – _what if he’s hiding a knife or gun of his own there?_ – but what he pulls out is a cell phone, after all, and right away he deliberately keys in three digits – three short beeps. He raises the phone to his ear with a smirk already plastered to his thin lips.

For just a moment, the room is silent save for Izaya’s hurried breathing and the hollow tone of the call going through.

“Ah, yes,” the man speaks just as soon as the call is picked up by the responder. Izaya feels a chill – too late.

“I’m calling to report something… Yes, well, I’m not sure, but it seems to be a murder…”

 

**~~*~~**

 

Something twists painfully in Shizuo’s gut; for the eightieth time that night, he throws back the covers and drags himself upright in bed. He’s almost reached the point at which he’s too tired to sleep, anyway, but that’s not the real problem; he’s pretty sure that even a whole bottle of Shinra-supplied meds wouldn’t push him over the edge and into unconsciousness. Not _now._

“Shit,” he mutters, heat rolling restlessly somewhere in the space between skin and bone. “When ‘s the last time I actually slept…?”

He answers himself silently. Probably before he ever came across Izaya crying and completely beyond words. Probably before he cared, before he was suddenly forced straight back into the periphery of Izaya’s life – into watching the bastard tear himself up alone.

He sighs heavily and reaches for his cell phone on the stand by his bed. The screen’s light hurts his eyes, but what really has him wincing is the conspicuous absence of messages.

 _Wait,_ he reminds himself.

He already told the flea not to get himself hurt.

And Shizuo’s not dumb enough to believe that just saying it will ensure Izaya’s safety or even his caution, but it’s a promise all the same; if anything happens, it’ll be on Shizuo to get justice or vengeance or – or just anything else he can manage. That makes it his business, which means that he has every right to – call, maybe. Izaya never answers, but if he did – Shizuo wouldn’t have to worry for a while. He might even get to sleep…

His finger’s on the last digit before he can think twice.

No answer.

He tries again. There’s a pretty bad storm happening outside, so maybe Izaya can’t hear the ringing over the wind and rain –

_“The number you have dialed…”_

Shizuo curses and closes his phone with a harsh flick of his wrist.

He lies back down again. The pillow under his head still reeks of flea – and not just of flea, but also of things he’d rather not think hard about, tears and sweat and – dirt – semen – piss –

He’s probably imagining it.

“Pick up,” he snarls into the pitch dark of his room. He raises the phone to his ear and tries one more time.

No answer.

So that’s it. He stumbles clumsily out of bed, winces at the cold of the wood beneath his feet and tugs on the first clothes he can find. His chest hurts and his head is light and he’s breathing hard, but that’s it.

He’s got a bad feeling, and those are almost never wrong when they’ve got anything to do with Orihara Izaya.

 

**~~*~~**

 

There’s a single police cruiser sitting in front of Izaya’s house.

Its lights have been left on – alternating red and blue cast like marbles through sheets of heavy rain, long lines of color that guide Shizuo to the place from some point halfway down the block. The front door is standing open, too, and there are lights on in a bunch of rooms. The soft yellow doesn’t pierce much darkness beyond the very immediate vicinity, but it’s no less unsettling for that.

Because it all means that something’s happened.

Shaking with cold and fear, Shizuo passes the front gate quickly and stumbles his way up the path to the porch. His hand stills just short of the bell, and he lowers it slowly back to his side. He doesn’t stop walking, though, and so without doing anything to announce his entrance he finds himself inside with his shoes halfway off and his breath coming loud and fast.

He can hear muffled voices somewhere above him – probably the second floor, probably Izaya’s room – and from behind him emanate the hum of another car’s engine, the crackling of its tires on wet pavement and the unmistakable flash of more police lights.

A frozen moment passes.

“Excuse me.”

Shizuo turns, eyes wide.

“Are you a member of this household?” the officer asks. He’s relatively old, gray-haired with a gently lined face and a hard look in his eyes. “Could I ask you to explain the situation here?”

“Ah – no,” Shizuo mumbles, “I’m not – I don’t live here. I’m… a friend. I just – I felt like something might be – um – so I came to check things out…”

At almost three in the morning? It sounds like a lame excuse even to Shizuo, and the officer eyes him skeptically for a long moment. “I see. Then I’m going to have to ask you to stay where you are. If anything –”

“Itou-san?!”

“Ah,” the officer – Itou, apparently – sighs. “Yes, we’re here,” he calls in the direction of the other voice. He moves toward it, past Shizuo, and over his shoulder he adds, “Don’t go anywhere, alright? You’re not in any trouble, but it’s looking like we might have to ask you a few questions later.”

“Wait,” Shizuo rasps, stumbling after the man. “Should – shouldn’t you call an ambulance or something?”

“Already have. Probably too late, but they should be here soon, anyway.”

 _He’s so unconcerned,_ Shizuo realizes. It’s like he doesn’t care at all – nothing if not business-like – ‘cause it’s his job but it’s got nothing to do with him and if Izaya dies, who’s gonna care for more than a month or so? Soon as everyone’s sure _they’re_ not also in danger, things’ll go back to normal – and they’ll be better off without him, anyway – but Shizuo –

“I’m going, too,” he breathes. The officer slows as he rounds a corner and almost manages to glance behind him before Shizuo blows past and to the stairs. The blonde doesn’t pause to look at Itou-san’s face, but his short yell is more than enough indication of just how much he appreciates the direct disobedience.

As if anyone here stands half a chance at stopping him with physical force, anyway; for once, his ludicrous strength feels like a good thing.

“You –”

Down the hall, the younger officer whose voice he heard before. Shizuo advances on him and demands Izaya – just Izaya, he chokes on the name and repeats the same questions again and again _where is he what happened is he okay –_

“Wait,” the man all but shouts, hands heavy on Shizuo’s shoulders. He’s too short to impress the blonde with his size – he has to reach way up just to touch him like that – but he’s got the answers and authority and at the top of the stairs now is the other officer with heavy footsteps that scream irritation.

Shizuo waits – more like hesitates for just a moment – long enough that he notices for the first time the woman with long, jet-black hair and tired eyes standing off to one side of the hallway. There’s a tall, thin man next to her – sort of plain-looking, with a stubbly beard and lingering dimples – and they both look so kind despite the pain and fear in their eyes that it’s almost strange how clearly they remind Shizuo of Izaya. Physically, maybe, but these people don’t look capable of raising a guy as bad-natured as that flea – as the flea from before, at least.

Shizuo forces himself to stop staring. He takes a step back.

“Please,” he begs again. “He can’t – not like that –”

“We’re doing everything we can for him now,” the young officer tries to reassure him – and there’s the urgent sound of talking still coming from what must be Izaya’s room, muffled directions and heavy breathing and stuff being moved around. “The ambulance should arrive soon. Making any more noise here won’t help anything – okay?” He nods in the direction of Izaya’s family, and Shizuo realizes suddenly that they’re watching him more than they are the room at the cop’s back.

“I won’t,” Shizuo says quickly. He tears his gaze away from the family as soon as he can collect his thoughts somewhat. “Let me see him. Was there anyone else here? Who called you?”

“We can’t, no, and no one knows,” Itou mutters from behind Shizuo. “You’re not a member of the victim’s family, so we’re not obligated to answer any more of your questions. Please move away from the door.”

A light shuffling of fabric and slippered feet on wood interrupts the rising tide of frustration in Shizuo.

“Could you possibly be Kishitani Shinra-kun?”

Startled by the unobtrusively feminine voice, Shizuo turns to face Izaya’s mom. “No,” he admits sheepishly. “Shinra’s a friend of mine, too, but. Um. Izaya might’ve mentioned me… Heiwajima Shizuo…”

His mother looks puzzled on top of sad. “I don’t know…” she hems. “But that child’s changed so much lately, and he’s never been one to talk much about his friends or school life…”

“Oh,” Shizuo acknowledges lamely. “Yeah…”

“Then do you know what happened? Where has he been for so long?”

Shizuo stiffens accidentally, clears his throat and shrugs. “He’ll tell you himself.”

“But what if Iza-nii dies?” Mairu questions. Both her hands are wrapped up in her father’s long fingers, but she doesn’t look like the idea of her brother dying bothers her all that much.

“Mairu,” Orihara-san warns softly. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes to Shizuo quickly. “Of course there’s still a chance…”

Shizuo grinds his teeth together and forms fists at his sides. He manages to force a nod, but the frustration from before is worse than ever now; he’s seriously about to lose it, if only because this couldn’t be more wrong. Izaya’s family should be in tears. They should be in that room with him, begging him to hold on because he’s their son and brother and not just another random teenager gone too soon. They should be demanding an explanation from Shizuo.

They shouldn’t be giving up before it’s over.

“We’re just preparing ourselves for the worst case,” he hears. “Izaya’s never been one to give up, though. That’s why –”

Shizuo looks up, hadn’t realized he’d been looking down to start with. “I know,” he agrees softly. “Yeah, I get it. But it’s okay. There’s no way he won’t be fine.”

The old officer, Itou, scoffs quietly from the sidelines, but Shizuo hardly takes any notice of it.

There’s another sound mingling with the others, now – very like an ambulance siren coming fast from several streets away.

 

**~~*~~**

Faster faster _faster._

His mind doesn’t even register an initial burst of pain. Instead, it’s muted, it’s blunt, it’s just a tiny bit of sharp discomfort – so he doubts that it’s really happened until he feels hot liquid gushing into his open hands.

His breath stutters in his throat and he lurches forward, _onto_ the knife with enough force that he can hear it squelching wetly as it slides deeper into his side. He kicks uselessly and yelps, bewildered by the unfamiliarity of it. His whole body shivers and his stomach twists like he’s about to throw up. He wants it out, but if that happens – he’ll bleed out, it hurts – he’ll die –

“…stabbed with plenty of force at least five times before his arm was…”

 _Broken,_ he remembers, but so was _his,_ it shouldn’t have been that easy –

And he pulled the knife out and that was when it really hurt and the blood and his arm – he gave it a sharp tug and Izaya heard the snap before he felt it and screamed –

“…incredibly lucky, though…”

He forgets how to coordinate his movements to crawl away, so without thinking he curls in on himself and begs for it to stop – _don’t take it away,_ he chokes, _please not this, don’t do this_ – but that’s nothing more than a good opportunity to sink a second blade and then the first into two separate places on his back – and it hurts, now it hurts, now he knows what’s happening and now he’s starting to forget –

Laughter. The source of it rolls him over and breaks him out of his defensive position, takes a good long look and tears back his pants – promising one more time all the while, laughing –

“…evidence of sexual assault…”

“Thank you…”

“…probably want to come back tomorrow…but we’ll keep you updated as developments…”

He finishes with a hot spurt of semen and the fifth blade buried decisively to its hilt in the soft flesh of Izaya’s bare thigh. Izaya’s done struggling, gone limp and near-breathless – and even that’s an effort, he’s tired, he’s gotta stay awake but he can’t do it he’s scared but – but – he can’t breathe and it hurts and he falls –

There’s something heavy on him, something long and cold in his mouth and throat. He tries to scream, but his voice won’t come because he’s shivering too hard, he’s wet _blood-soaked_ and there are so many pairs of hands holding him down, hurting him worse – the bandages are too tight, he’s crying and choking at the same time –

“...st breathe, just breathe, hey, it’s okay, sshhh –”

“Aahh – g-gh –”

His eyes fly open, he sees, there’s a lot of light and the thing in his throat – he needs it out –

“– _now,_ he’s fucking choking, would someone _please_ –”

Deep breath – deep – _it’s gone –_

“Sh-Shizu – Shizu-cha –”

“Right here,” Shizuo calls, but he’s not touching, he’s far away and there are people all over, their hands on him and close impersonal sounds like metal and machines. “Izaya, just calm down, they’re trying to help…!”

 _No, you don’t understand,_ he’s bleeding and they’re sticking him full of knives and hurt – he’s about to disappear, they’re going to take even that away from him –

He claws at the blankets and opens and closes his mouth ineffectually. The scent of blood is almost overpowering.

“We’ve got to put him under for now,” someone hisses. “He’s going to hurt himself.”

“Don’t,” Shizuo protests. Izaya twists to see him, but his eyes won’t focus on anything. “Don’t – Izaya, they’ll go away if you hold still – dammit,” the blonde curses loudly. “Let _me_ –”

His hand closes around Izaya’s almost before the words finish tumbling into open air.

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya pants. “It _hurts_ …”

“I know,” Shizuo all but whispers; he sounds like he can feel it, too. “I know, but just – take a deep breath, okay? Slowly,” he warns when the throbbing pain forces Izaya into a cringe. “In, okay – good. Let it go… Again…”

He stills, and there’s a terrifying, floating moment of nothing – he sees a woman’s face looking incredulously at someone he can’t make out –

“Izaya – hey.”

He stirs, opens his eyes.

“M-mm…”

Shizuo sighs. “Guess you’re still tired, huh?”

“I’m – I couldn’t breathe…”

He can see Shizuo, now; his eyes look wet, look sad. He probably hadn’t wanted to hear anything like that from Izaya so soon. “It’s alright. They’re finished for now. You’ve been out for days, you know… I don’t understand everything, exactly, but after that much time I guess it’s important to check on a few things. Plus – the way you were when you woke up…”

“Where…?”

Shizuo straightens slightly in his seat – white metal, cold and uncomfortable looking.

“Hospital,” he summarizes.

“And – and – th-the man who was –”

Shizuo frowns gently. “Sure you wanna talk about this now?”

“He got away,” Izaya guesses, voice flat.

The blonde smiles forlornly and shakes his head. “No, they caught him.” Seeing Izaya’s look of hopeless doubt, he adds, “I mean it. The day after we found you, they caught him trying to leave ‘Bukuro. There’s no way he’ll get away with it, either, Izaya, so – so it’s okay –”

“It’s not,” Izaya whimpers. “I’ve made so many mistakes, Shizu-chan…”

“But you’re not gonna get hurt again,” Shizuo repeats. “It’s fine if you wanna make mistakes now. All you have to do is get better, and you can do that as slowly as you want to.”

He looks so awfully _sincere._

“Ah,” Izaya rasps, not quite sure how to feign a note of relief. “Thanks…”

“How do you feel, by the way?” Shizuo says, suddenly and pretentiously cheerful. “Need any more pain meds?”

Izaya shakes his head slowly; the motion requires a surprising amount of effort. He’s reminded of the drugs from his time back in that room – he shivers. “Th-that’s fine. It’s for the doctors to decide things like that…”

“Your choice,” Shizuo mumbles. “They don’t know shit, anyway.”

“Uh-huh,” Izaya says with a little smile. “Coming from Shizu-chan, that’s hardly convincing. They’re just doing their jobs…”

“Yeah, and they’ve all been pretty damn methodical about it, too,” Shizuo comments bitterly. “If they weren’t helping you, I swear I’d –”

“Yeah,” Izaya whispers. “You’re just a violent idiot, after all.”

“Lucky for you,” Shizuo mutters. “You were fucking scared out of your mind.”

Izaya shivers and puts his hand out for Shizuo to hold. “‘Cause I’m weak.”

“You’re –?”

Izaya pointedly ignores him.

“You? You’re _weak?_ ” Shizuo shakes his head, takes the hand and cradles it without closing his fingers. “Izaya, you’re still the only one who’s done _anything_ this whole –”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Izaya hisses. “I was alone, Shizu-chan, and everything I did I did because I couldn’t think straight enough to come up with a better option. And it’s not even over, because you know what? You can lock him up or even kill him, but I have to live with it in the real world – and I almost got myself killed all for the sake of that –”

“Idiot.”

“What?”

“You’re an idiot,” Shizuo repeats. “It’s not like it’ll never get better for you. I can understand if you felt like you were alone, but that’s not how it actually is – or was. You can give up and go back to hating my guts if that’s what you want, but I – I can’t force myself to feel that way about you anymore.”

His eyes flood with tears before he’s half done talking.

“What the heck,” Izaya almost laughs, “Shizu-chan, that wasn’t eloquent at all…”

“Well, sorry!” he retorts, blush heavy and bright.

“No – it’s okay…”

“So?”

“So – thanks.”

“‘Thanks?’”

“Even if you do wind up getting tired of me,” Izaya explains, “I guess it’s not as though I’ll regret the sentiment, Shizu-chan. Thanks for that much, at least.”

“Idiot,” Shizuo sulks. “Keep thanking me for a decade at least, then, ‘cause that’s how long it’ll take for me to even think about giving up.”

Izaya nods, smiles, stares at his hand in Shizuo’s.

It’s warm.

“If you insist…”


End file.
